Strange Affair

Strange Affair
Author: Peter Robinson
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2009-06-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1551992213

The fifteenth installment of the internationally bestselling Inspector Banks series When Alan Banks receives a disturbing telephone call from his brother, Roy, he abandons the peaceful Yorkshire Dales for the bright lights of London to search him out. But Roy has vanished into thin air, and now Banks fears this could have been their final conversation. Meanwhile, DI Annie Cabbot is called to a murder scene on a quiet stretch of road just outside Eastvale. A young woman called Jennifer Clewes has been found dead in her car, and in the back pocket of her jeans, written on a slip of paper, police discover Banks’s name and address. Living in his brother’s empty, luxurious South Kensington flat, Banks finds himself digging into the life of the brother he never really knew, or even liked. He begins to uncover some troubling surprises, leaving Annie to track down Jennifer Clewes’s friends and colleagues alone. It seems that both trails are leading towards frightening conclusions. And when the cases begin to intersect, the consequences for Banks and Annie become terrifying . . .

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
Author: Mark Hodder
Publisher: Pyr
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2010-09-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1616142901

London, 1861. Sir Richard Francis Burton - explorer, linguist, scholar, and swordsman; his reputation tarnished; his career in tatters; his former partner missing and probably dead. Algernon Charles Swinburne - unsuccessful poet and follower of de Sade, for whom pain is pleasure, and brandy is ruin! Their investigations lead them to one of the defining events of the age, and the terrifying possibility that the world they inhabit shouldn't exist at all!

The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith

The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith
Author: Douglas MacGowan
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2021-09-01
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0857902725

Discover the true story of Victorian Scotland's trial of the century. It was a case that rocked Victorian society. Emile L'Angelier was a working-class immigrant from the Channel Islands who began a clandestine affair with prominent Glasgow socialite Madeleine Smith. Six weeks after Emile threatened to show Madeleine's father their passionate letters, on 23 March 1857, he was found dead from arsenic poisoning. The evidence against Madeleine seemed overwhelming as she went to trial for murdering her lover. Douglas MacGowan's vivid account reads by turns like a thriller, a love story and a courtroom drama. He quotes extensively from contemporary sources, notably the pathology reports, the trial testimony and the infamous correspondence between Madeleine and Emile, whose explicit content so shocked Victorian sensibilities. Ultimately it is up to the reader to judge Madeleine's guilt or innocence.

The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris

The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris
Author: Leon Garfield
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2013-06-30
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1448173892

Harris and Bostock are best friends, but they are as different from one another as night and day. Harris thinks up harebrained schemes and Bostock gets in trouble for them. When Harris puts his baby sister Adelaide in the woods to see if she will be adopted by a fox, little do they realize that they are starting a chain of events that will be remembered in their little seaside town as the Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris.

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter
Author: Alexis Hall
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 044000134X

In this charming, witty, and weird fantasy novel, Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new twist on those renowned characters. Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation. When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham is drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark. But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas' stock-in-trade.

The Margot Affair

The Margot Affair
Author: Sanaë Lemoine
Publisher: Hogarth
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-06-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984854445

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE The secret daughter of a French politician and a famous actress drops the startling revelation that will shatter her family in this beguiling debut novel of intrigue and betrayal. NAMED ONE OF SUMMER’S BEST BOOKS BY The Skimm • Marie Claire • LitHub • Subway Book Review • Paperback Paris Margot Louve is a secret: the child of a longstanding affair between an influential French politician with presidential ambitions and a prominent stage actress. This hidden family exists in stolen moments in a small Parisian apartment on the Left Bank. It is a house of cards that Margot—fueled by a longing to be seen and heard—decides to tumble. The summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: a well-regarded journalist whose trust seems surprisingly easy to gain. But as Margot is drawn into an adult world she struggles to comprehend, she learns how one impulsive decision can threaten a family’s love with ruin, shattering the lives of those around her in ways she could never have imagined. Exposing the seams between private lives and public faces, The Margot Affair is a novel of deceit, desire, and transgression—and the exhilarating knife-edge upon which the danger of telling the truth outweighs the cost of keeping secrets.

Her Last Affair

Her Last Affair
Author: John Searles
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2022-03-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0062199447

"A winner: tense and terrifying with a twist you’ll never see coming. You won’t soon forget these characters and the shocking ways their lives intersect." -- Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me Every marriage has its secrets…. Skyla lives alone in the shadow of the defunct drive-in movie theater that she and her husband ran for nearly fifty years. Ever since Hollis’s death in a freak accident the year before, Skyla spends her nights ruminating about the regrets and deceptions in her long marriage. That is, until she rents a cottage on the property to a charming British man, Teddy Cornwell…. A thousand miles away, Linelle is about to turn fifty. Bored by her spouse and fired from her job when a questionable photo from her youth surfaces on social media, her only source of joy is an on-line affair with her very first love, a man she’s not seen in nearly thirty years, Teddy Cornwell… While in New York City, Jeremy, a failed and bitter writer, accepts an assignment to review a new restaurant in Providence. Years ago, Providence was the site of his first great love and first great heartbreak—and maybe, just maybe, he’ll look her up when he’s back in town… Part page-turning thriller, part homage to film noir, and dazzling in its insight into the often desperate desires of the human heart, Her Last Affair is a tense and atmospheric novel of love lost and found again.

Cleaving

Cleaving
Author: Julie Powell
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2009-12-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0316054488

Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thing she'd ever do -- until she embarked on the voyage recounted in her memoir, Cleaving. Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way to Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs -- tough physical work that only sometimes distracts her from thoughts of afternoon trysts. The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellow butchers around the world -- from South America to Europe to Africa. At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart.

The Ashford Affair

The Ashford Affair
Author: Lauren Willig
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1250014492

Feeling unfulfilled in the face of an imminent legal partnership and a broken engagement, Manhattan lawyer Clementine Evans learns of a long-buried family secret that leads her to the inner circles of World War I British society and the red hills of Kenya.

A Front Page Affair

A Front Page Affair
Author: Radha Vatsal
Publisher: Canelo
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2019-01-17
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 178863425X

It’s 1915 in New York City and an intrepid young journalist is about to get her biggest story yet... The Lusitania has just been sunk, and headlines about a shooting at J.P. Morgan’s mansion and the Great War are splashed across the front page of every newspaper. Capability “Kitty” Weeks would love nothing more than to report on the news of the day, but she’s stuck writing about fashion and society gossip over on the Ladies’ Page – until a man is murdered at a high society picnic on her beat. Determined to prove her worth as a journalist, Kitty finds herself plunged into the midst of a wartime conspiracy that threatens to derail the United States’ attempt to remain neutral – and to disrupt the privileged life she has always known. The first book in a highly anticipated mystery series featuring rising journalism star Kitty Weeks packed full of historical detail, A Front Page Affair is perfect for fans of Rhys Bowen and Jacqueline Winspear Praise for A Front Page Affair ‘A delightfully spunky heroine defies convention as an investigative reporter in this engaging historical mystery. The small factual details of New York life are gems’ Rhys Bowen ‘This lively and well-researched debut introduces a charming historical series and an appealing fish-out-of-water sleuth who seeks independence and a career in an age when most women are bent on getting married, particularly to titled Englishmen. Devotees of Rhys Bowen’s mysteries will enjoy making the acquaintance of Miss Weeks.’ Library Journal ‘The fascinating historical details add flair to this thoroughly engaging mystery starring an intelligent amateur sleuth reminiscent of Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy. Vatsal’s debut will leave readers eager for Kitty’s next adventure.’ Booklist ‘The mystery plot was enthralling in and of itself, but it was the portrait of Old New York that provided the wow factor - there are very few writers who can conjure up this kind of authenticity. A fun, fascinating, feminist read – especially if you love New York!’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ‘It is very rare to find a debut novel so well written and so engrossing’ Reader review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐